House Democrats Want to Fund Health Care With an Ill-Advised Surtax on the Rich.  —  THERE IS a serious case to be made that the U.S. income tax system should become more progressive.  The average rate paid by the top 1 percent of households shrank from 33 percent in 1986 to about 23 percent in 2006.

Smiling GOPers Ought to be Frowning  —  Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny.  —  Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's …

Sen. Coburn Questions Judge Sotomayor at Supreme Court Nomination Hearings  —  Review all exchanges organized by senator  —  COBURN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I'd ask unanimous consent to put an article from the newspaper this morning, the Washington Times.  —  LEAHY: Without objection, it'll be placed in the record.

OBAMA BOOED IN ST. LOUIS!... And Throws a Sissy Pitch (Video)  —  Barack Obama Booed at the All-Star Game in St. Louis On Tuesday!  —  And, he threw a sissy pitch:  —  It's going to be a rough 4 years.  He's only been in office 5 months and he's already getting booed.  —  ...And protested.

Bombshell: Orders revoked for soldier challenging prez  —  Major victory for Army warrior questioning Obama's birthplace  —  A U.S. Army Reserve major from Florida scheduled to report for deployment to Afghanistan within days has had his military orders revoked after arguing he should not be required …

Buchanan: GOP Needs More Race-Baiting, Not Less  —  A provocative article by Pat Buchanan argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans shouldn't worry about alienating Hispanic voters, they should just focus on getting white people to like them more: … And he sees race-baiting attacks as the way to do it:

Media jostled for access to Sanford  —  E-mails illustrate frenzy to be the first on the air or in print  —  National media blitzed Gov. Mark Sanford's staff, offering big ratings and, possibly, a sympathetic venue in an effort to land the first interview with the governor after his six-day trip to Argentina.

Palin: All Tail, No Head  —  Sarah Palin's political action committee — SarahPAC — raised $733,000 in the first half of the year and is set to push past $1 million in the wake of the recent attention she's gotten herself.  On the one hand, this isn't that impressive.  Mitt Romney, for instance, has raised twice as much.

CFJ: Obama Is Putting a Terrorist On The Bench!  —  Yesterday, we noticed that the Committee for Justice had just unveiled two ads calling for Sonia Sotomayor's defeat - one contrasting her to Martin Luther King and the other claiming she wants to “take away your guns.”

Florida Project Under Investigation Is Linked to Rep. Murtha  —  When an Air Force command in north Florida sought new battlefield technologies, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) steered millions in federal dollars its way to hire defense contractors.  —  The research effort at the Pensacola Air …

Key Obama advisers indicate openness to pushing health care reform through with just Democratic votes.  —  Bloomberg's Ed Chen reports that two of Obama's top advisers — Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod - “may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress …

Chuck Todd's arguments against investigations  —  (updated below - Update II)  —  NBC's Chuck Todd — who, remember, is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions — was on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Tuesday discussing reports that Eric Holder is likely …

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Perlmutter part owns ‘green’ bank he helped  —  Provision in bill would aid family members, political donor  —  Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado inserted a provision into the recently passed House climate change bill that would drum up business for “green” banks …